Waubonsie Valley student’s research shows benefit of children's cancer care close to home

Ask a six-year-old, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" and they’ll probably have no trouble coming up with a "cool' job like firefighter or veterinarian. But as young people get to high school and even college, many struggle to find an answer.

Taylor Hughes, a senior at Naperville's Waubonsie Valley High School has no such trouble.

"I had an idea in middle school that I wanted to go into medicine," says Hughes.

At 15 she participated in the Mini-Medical School at Edward Hospital, directed by Ira Rubin, MD of Naperville Pediatrics. The program offers motivated teens lectures on medical science and hands-on experiences, such as reading x-rays and setting casts.

In the summer after her junior year, Hughes was ready to learn more about being a physician. In hopes of arranging a shadowing experience, she contacted Charles Rubin, MD of the University of Chicago Pediatric Hematology/Oncology Group, who is also on the medical staff at Edward Hospital.

Dr. Rubin is part of the team of experts at the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children's Hospital that diagnoses children with cancer and develops treatment plans for them. Childhood cancers typically require highly specialized care available through academic medical centers. Thanks to a collaboration between Edward and physicians from Comer, kids with cancer in suburban Chicago who need this expertise can access much of their treatment in Naperville. Dr. Rubin sees patients both at Comer and Edward.

The conversation with Hughes led Dr. Rubin to invite her to help manage a study of the impact of Edward's pediatric oncology services on local kids with cancer and their families.

"I was impressed with Taylor's motivation and her talent, and I thought the project would be a good learning experience," says Dr. Rubin.

The study compared the experiences of two hypothetical 6-year-old boys from Naperville who were diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) at a teaching hospital in Chicago. Because treatment protocols for this type of leukemia are standardized, both patients were prescribed the same number of treatments and clinical visits. But the first virtual patient received all of his treatments at the teaching hospital and the second boy received as much of his treatment as possible at Edward.

"We knew coming into the city for their child's treatments caused a lot of stress for suburban parents," says Dr. Rubin. "This is especially true for cancers like ALL, which typically requires two to three years of chemotherapy. I wanted to measure to what degree we'd lighten the load if much of the treatment could be provided at a quality community hospital."

The virtual families' experiences were compared for travel times/expenses, meals away from home, time off from school for the patient and missed activities of the siblings.

Hughes began to gather the data and crunch the numbers. The results showed that shifting part of the patient's care to Edward brought the following benefits:

• More than 4,800 fewer miles were driven, for a savings of 193 hours and $1,145.• The family missed about 60 fewer home meals and almost 50 fewer sibling events.• The patient missed 42 fewer school days.

Hughes says, "This experience not only exposed me to different staff in the hospital, I also got to see what a difference good quality care close to home made in the lives of patients and their families."